Not to portray the mouse and his cookie, but I'm looking for a very specific type of smut. My partner and I are pretty voracious readers. However, we differ in the things we're attracted to in a novel. Recently, they've found novels in my milieau that they found enjoyable, and it's been exciting talking about the prospect of them finding their people in my genres. I'd like to do the same, but I'm kind of a prick about romance. I love love, and in other forms of media, I don't mind aspects of romance and relationships being center stage. In the novel form, I almost can't stand it. I find myself getting extremely bored when a relationship is the main focus of the narrative. I like thoughtful novels, or at least deeply engrossing characterization. I love a good story. But in an effort to find my footing in a little of their world, I want to find something that might mix what I enjoy with aspects of what they enjoy.
Tl;Dr. I'd like to find a dark fantasy or scifi novel with aspects of dark romance where the plot is more important than the smut, but where smut is still prevalent. Hopefully, something with interesting characters and strong prose.
Some of my personal favorite novels are
Tolkiens Legendarium Works
The Lathe of Heaven and the Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin
Replay by Ken Grimwood
East of Eden and Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Notes from Underground and Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis
Short Stay in Hell by Steven L Peck
Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
We by Yevgeny Zemyatin
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
Many short fiction works by Jorge Borges, Brian Evenson, Thomas Ligotti, Ray Bradbury
I hope there's someone out there who has had the same unicorn book search
by MeatGunderson